47 Recent Stories

Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a huge sweet tooth. I always have. My friend and fellow graduate student Andrew is equally afflicted, and living in Hershey, Pennsylvania — the "Chocolate Capital of the World" — doesn't help either of us. B...

Doctors in China were surprised to find that a young woman who had lived a normal life for more than two decades was actually missing an important part of her brain, according to a new report of her case. The 24-year-old's strange condition was disco...

It is not hard to estrange the idea of the chorus. Why should songs have some parts that are repeated and others that are not? Imagine other works of art in which a quarter or half of the work is repeated: a movie that shows the same 10-minute sequen...

Behind the controls of the Metro-North train that derailed in New York earlier this week was a tired driver, according to new reports that engineer William Rockefeller fell asleep at the wheel. Could lack of sleep cause such a fatal mistake? Biologic...

Does the rise in IQ scores over the past century mean people are getting smarter? Since the beginning of the 20th century, IQ scores around the world have been increasing at a rate of around three points per decade, leaving intelligence researchers p...

I'm fascinated with all the new information being published about the brain and how it is converging with the efforts of marketers to more effectively communicate with consumers. I've heard neuroscientists say that more has been learned about the bra...

People who are genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's disease may have differences in their brains that can be detected as early as infancy, a new study suggests. Researchers scanned the brains of 162 healthy babies, including 60 who had inherited a ...

It may look like the poor man’s Google Glass, but don’t let the iPhone-strapped-to-the-side-of-your-head thing fool you, Neurocam and its accompanying app may foretell the future of advertising. Demoed recently at the Human Sensing 2013 conference in...

Humans need sleep; everybody knows that without it, we get cranky, a bit loopy, and then we die. Unfortunately, science has been a little iffy about it; though we understood the negative effects associated with lack of sleep, no one really knew why t...

A large group of scientists and researchers is working to develop the fastest computer known to man that would operate much like the human brain. The Human Brain Project, which launched Monday at a conference in Switzerland, combines the brainpower o...

The war veteran who recoils at the sound of a car backfiring and the recovering drug addict who feels a sudden need for their drug of choice when visiting old haunts have one thing in common: Both are victims of their own memories. New research indic...

Instead of entrusting the light show to a technician, Mickey Hart, former percussionist for the Grateful Dead, makes sure that he is the one in control -- by controlling the lights using his brainwaves. Hart dons a black cap studded with electrodes t...

Getting older often means mental acuity declines. Some studies have pointed to the idea that you can exercise the brain to keep the mind sharp. But it’s been hard to pin down what’s happening and how real the effect is. A team at the University of Ca...

Though it may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, researchers at the University of Washington have successfully sent brain signals between two humans using noninvasive technology and the Internet. University of Washington researchers Rajesh R...

Ear, eye, liver, windpipe, bladder and even a heart. The list of body parts grown from stem cells is getting longer and longer. Now add to it one of the most complex organs: the brain. A team of European scientists has grown parts of a human brain in...

The brains of students on their way back to school benefit from the chemicals found in certain foods. The Earth provides many tasty treats for students, but don't leave these foods behind in the school cafeteria. The foods help brain functioning in a...

When a person has a blood clot in certain parts of the brain, surgeons must weigh the pros and cons of whether going its removal is worth the potential damage that might occur to the surrounding tissue. That delicate dilemma is why researchers at Van...

For the first time, researchers have implanted an electrode that can record neural activity while it simultaneously delivers electric current to the brain. Minneapolis-based medical device company Medtronic developed the device, which can also adjust...

We don't have a mind-reading machine yet, but that's not to say we don't have the technology to create one. The technique of functional MRI (fMRI), which measure changes in localized brain activity over time, can now be used to infer information rega...

Technology for monitoring brain activity and eye movements might someday be used to detect when a person is falling asleep while driving, and alert them to prevent an accident. Researchers in England are working to combine two high-tech tools — high-...

Ever heard of the Temporo-Parietal Junction? No, it's not a train station, nor is it a 60's-style rock group. The TPJ, as it's also known, is the area of the brain that gets activated when we're thinking about how to share something and who to share ...

Today, researchers have unveiled the most detailed 3D image of the human brain ever taken. The image reveals structures as tiny as 20 microns -- 50 times smaller than those created using the best MRI technology. The image, made as part of a project c...

A dragonfly snatching a meal in midair is nothing short of an aerial dogfight. First, it must predict the trajectory of its prey, maneuver a course of intersection and make split-second adaptations to outwit evasive mosquitoes or fruit flies. All thi...

In the new techno-thriller Upload, a young computer scientist with a sketchy past and distrust of society decides to take the ultimate leap forward by scanning his brain and uploading his memories, personality and consciousness into a simulated world...

"You had to be there." It's usually the expression you use when you're trying to tell your friend about last night's dream, in which you climbed Mount Everest, won the lottery and became president of the world. But now Japanese researchers have devel...

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